In the conventional method of making bearing balls, cylindrical slugs are cut from steel wire of proper size for the desired size of the finished balls. These cylindrical slugs are then "flashed" or rounded with the slugs in a soft "as cut" condition. The rounding process comprises rolling the slugs between an upper plate and a lower plate which are rotated relative to one another at low speed for example 80 rpm so as plastically to deform the slugs into approximately spherical shape. Because of the wide variation in slug shape this process can exert excessive stress on individual pieces so as to cause internal cracks in the metal slugs. If a load of 100,000 to 200,000 balls is being processed, it will be possible to have 1 to 5% of the balls with cracks. As there is no simple method of separating the cracked spheres, a percentage of the finished bearing balls will be defective. The flashed slugs are then heat-treated to harden them whereupon they are ground and lapped to form the finished bearing balls. It will be understood that this flashing process cannot be used on frangible material since such material will crack.